“Christmas in prison is just another day to the authorities unless you hold that day in your heart,” said Fitchett.

Nonprofit chaplains

Christmas in a Virginia prison is different than in any other state in the union.

Virginia has roughly 30,000 inmates, but it is the only state in which prison chaplains are not state employees.

So it contracts with GraceInside, a 95-year-old nonprofit funded by churches, foundations and other donations, to provide part-time chaplains — one each for the state’s 31 facilities.

“It’s a big job, with part-time hours and little pay,” said Myers, himself a former corrections department counselor and trainer who has been with GraceInside for a decade.

“It’s a forgotten mission field that’s right here in our back yard,” he said.

The chaplains provide counseling, guidance and religious programing. They organize Christmas Eve and Christmas Day services.

“Trying to bring grace or mercy or compassion inside the prison walls,” is how Myers put it.

Without it, Fitchett said there is nothing.

“During your stay in prison, most are drawn toward Christ out of lost hope and a sense of fear that without believing in something beyond this life, why is it worth living year after year in here?” he wrote.

Myers said the idea of Christian forgiveness is especially hard for victims’ families.

“Our human instinct makes it very hard to forgive,” he said. “And even if you forgive, you never forget.”

Still, he added: “I think people forget one of the last things Jesus did on the cross was ask for forgiveness for a criminal.”

Familiar routine

In the fall of 1991, Clay Clark killed his grandmother on Chincoteague Island for crack money.

He was sentenced to two life terms plus 40 years for the murder.

He knows well the routine of Christmas in prison. It is not unlike the routine of any day behind bars.

“For the most part, it is the same from prison to prison for the religious and non-religious alike,” wrote Clark in a letter from Nottoway Correctional Center, a 1,100-inmate facility near Burkeville.

“There is a special meal, but no special programs. Visitation is held for those who can receive pre-approved visitors.”

Clark follows a religion called the House of Yahweh and “doesn’t believe Christmas is the time the Savior was actually born.”